92 THE PROTEOMORPHIC THEORY AND THE NEW MEDICINE 



found in the body merely to carry on the work of oxygen con- 

 veying. The necessity for an unfailing oxygen supply is so 

 great that provision is made for a supply far in excess of the 

 average needs of the organism, as the bloodletting experiments 

 show. 



Without minimizing the value of the services of the red blood 

 corpuscles as a carrier of oxygen, then, we may safely assume 

 that its service as a provider of body protein is at least as great. 

 A realizing sense of the significance of this function comes to us 

 when we reflect that the intricate bodies of the red corpuscles are 

 built up in such numbers, that, massed together, they make up a 

 bulk of about four pounds in the body of a man weighing one 

 hundred and sixty pounds. 



So this erythrocytic body surpasses in size every other organ 

 in the body with the single exception of its collaborating organ, 

 the liver. The fact that the individual cells of this great organ 

 are scattered should not have blinded physiologists to the neces- 

 sity for the assumption that so massive a structure must have 

 vastly important functions in addition to the simple task of car- 

 rying oxygen. In point of fact, if the analysis just presented 

 be accepted, it is clear that this anomalous viscus is an organ 

 of the assimilative system having a share in protein metabolism 

 subordinate to no other. The function of dealing with bacterial 

 poisons may, after all, in the widest view, be considered even 

 as the function of carrying oxygen must be considered but an 

 incident in the career of the red blood corpuscle. 



Its supreme functions are to supply fuel in the form of pro- 

 tein for the bodily activities, and to complete the proteolysis of 

 foreign and native proteins in the blood stream. 



Yet the incidental function of aiding the leucocyte to deal 

 with bacterial toxins cannot be considered an insignificant one, 

 inasmuch as the safety of the organism as a whole may at any 

 time depend upon it. Measured in terms of the health of the 

 human individual, and even in human life, this function of the 

 red corpuscle has paramount importance. It would be rash to 

 assert that its defensive and immunizing functions are less con- 

 stantly called into action or less important in their results than 

 the allied functions of the leucocyte. Both are essential to the 

 life of the organism. 



I have suggested, indeed, that the immunizing functions of 

 the two types of corpuscles must be regarded as complementary, 

 rather than as in any sense competitive. It has been suggested 

 also that, to a certain extent, the functions overlap, so that an 

 enzyme secreted by one might facilitate the work of the other. 

 It was tentatively suggested that perhaps opsonin, which so con- 

 spicuously aids the leucocyte in its phagocytic functions, may be 



